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The India Meteorological Department announced a red alert for Idukki and Wayanad till August 14 and orange alert till August 15. Kannur has been put on red alert till August 13 and orange alert till August 15.

Disaster management team rescues flood-hit people at Vithiri in Wayanad on Friday.

Union Minister K J Alphons said that 11 out of Kerala’s 14 districts have been inundated by floods and teams of armed forces, sent by the Centre, have been helping the state government tackle the situation over the last three days even as the rain eased up a bit on Saturday after three days of heavy downpour.

Alphons, who hails from the state, also said that National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel have also been sent and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the situation

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department announced a red alert for Idukki and Wayanad till August 14 and amber alert till August 15. Kannur has been put on red alert till August 13 and amber alert till August 15.

The flooding became more intense after all five gates of the Idukki dam were opened and shutters of more than two dozen dams were lifted, making the Periyar river swell further. The rains had already increased its flow. Almost all 40-odd rivers in the state are in spate, officials said.At least 30 people were killed, nearly 54,000 left homeless while dams and rivers overflowed, parts of highways collapsed, and homes were swept away in severe flooding across the state as the heavy downpour continued for the third day on Friday.

The flooding became more intense after all five gates of the Idukki dam were opened and shutters of more than two dozen dams were lifted, making the Periyar river swell further. The rains had already increased its flow. Almost all 40-odd rivers in the state are in spate, officials said.At least 30 people were killed, nearly 54,000 left homeless while dams and rivers overflowed, parts of highways collapsed, and homes were swept away in severe flooding across the state as the heavy downpour continued for the third day on Friday.

The flooding became more intense after all five gates of the Idukki dam were opened and shutters of more than two dozen dams were lifted, making the Periyar river swell further. The rains had already increased its flow. Almost all 40-odd rivers in the state are in spate, officials said.

SAINT PETERSBURG: A
homemade bomb blast at a supermarket in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg injured 10 people Wednesday, officials said, sparking a
probe into attempted murder.

"According to preliminary information, an explosion of
an unidentified object occurred in a store," a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative
Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement.

The blast was caused by a "homemade explosive device
with the power equivalent to 200 grammes of TNT filled with lethal
fragments," she said.

"The investigation is looking at all possible causes of
what happened," she said, adding that a probe for attempted murder had
been launched.

The incident comes several months after Russia's second city
was rocked with a metro bombing in April which killed 16 people and amid
concern that hundreds of Russian citizens who travelled to fight alongside
jihadists groups abroad could pose a mounting security challenge back home.

Rattled by a one-two
punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday tried to block the
publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid
stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. The publishers
responded by moving the release date up by four days to Friday. Trump instructed his
lawyers to prevent the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside
the Trump White House” -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael
Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt
about his fitness for office. The book -- which
paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length
his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a “cease and
desist” order from Trump’s attorneys. “Your publication of
the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other
claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion
of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, an…